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To Care for Him (pg13, anime, deliaships)

To Care for Him
ACT 1: DIAMONDSHIPPING
Chapter 1: The Restaurant

Author’s Note: Anime-based. There will be three main acts: diamondshipping (Delia/Giovanni), haleshipping (Delia/Spencer Hale), and eldershipping (Delia/S. Oak). Delia wants the perfect family, but is that possible? Rated PG-13 for innuendos and violence.

Delia pedaled as fast as her teenage athletic feet could pedal, over rocks and branches and ditches, feverishly trying to get to the restaurant in Viridian City before nine o’clock that Sunday morning. Her mach bike, an aluminum custom collapsible bike in red and black stripes, could barely withstand the barrage of obstacles she deliberately ignored, but that was no matter. She would get there.

Her parents were farmers, sharecropping on a vast farm owned by the reputable Oak family. They grew a multitude of vegetables and then sold a portion of them to the Viridian Café for extra money. They worked long hours in the sun and, despite thirty-four-year-old Samuel Oak’s expert advice and help, they continued to be too exhausted to do anything around the house, even to sell their own produce. So it was that Delia was “volunteered” for the job. She had to clean the small house while her parents were away and then cook supper that night and in the morning, first thing, she had to deliver the produce to the restaurant so the cooks could prepare the dishes before lunch.

Like any girl of sixteen, Delia just wanted to get married and get away from her family before their rules drove her insane. They never asked her if she wanted to go somewhere or do something -- it was always about getting the house cleaned and delivering the produce. As the trees and the bushes swept past her, she found herself daydreaming of what the perfect man would be like….

Delia wore a Marilyn Monroe white dress with cream-colored sandals, the kind that used straps that wrapped around the ankles to keep them on. She stood forlornly on the street corner of some bustling metropolis, her normally tied-up brown hair loosely curling around her face. She was so beautiful, but no man would have her. She was destined to be alone, abandoned by friends and family alike because she had nothing to offer besides her looks, and they were fading with every passing year.

A gentle shower began, moistening her hair and dress, causing her to shiver. The world was dull and gray except for a few neon signs here and there above her head. Just as she was about to resign herself to pneumonia, with a little melodramatic coughing for effect, she realized the rain had suddenly stopped. She looked up and saw a giant black umbrella shielding her from the intensifying downpour. A young man with chiseled good looks and mystifying cologne and dark black hair smiled warmly at her. He dried her face with a small handkerchief, laughing gently.

“You look as though the world has thrown you away,” he told her, smiling.

She nodded.

He took off his leather jacket and wrapped it around her, revealing a tight blue sports shirt of spandex and dark blue running pants. As she felt the heat from his body transfer to hers, she smiled back and gazed lovingly into his eyes. Suddenly, she glanced back at the cold wet concrete below her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you have the wrong person. I’m not meant to be loved by anyone. I have no skills and no money and I don’t even have my own umbrella -- how sad is that? Surely you want some other girl who’d make you happy.”

He laughed and pecked her on the cheek, before nuzzling her behind her ear. “All I did was walk to this street corner, prepared for nothing else but a long day of paperwork at my office, yet the moment I saw you I knew there was no Goddess in Heaven for She was standing right there on the corner.”

Delia smiled reluctantly and nuzzled back. “Can it be true? Have you come to rescue me from my wretched life?”

The young man brushed against her ear with his hand, caressing her tenderly. “I shall resolve this very second to walk you back to Heaven where someone of your stature truly belongs. For this impermanent earth can do you no justice -- only in my arms shall you find everlasting paradise forever and ever.”

She brought her lips up to his -- God, he smelled like the spring mountain air….

Her bike jerked out behind her and she fell face first in some moss deep in the Viridian Forest. She quickly sprang up and tried to retrieve her bike, but found it being enveloped in a silky material, which was spurting out of the mouthpieces of very angry weedles, yellow larvae that reached halfway up to her knees when they reared up, with a sharp poisonous horn on its head. She had unknowingly raced across a section of forest filled with weedle eggs and the insect pokemon were quite upset with her lack of empathy.

She started to kick away the strings of silk angrily, swearing at the weedle, demanding that they stop so she could get to the restaurant in time. They responded simply by engulfing her in the same sticky material. She growled in frustration, as she knew it must be fifteen til nine already. As her legs and torso were being wrapped like a Christmas present, several baseball-sized rocks came flying out of the air and struck each weedle with amazing precision. She glanced around and spotted a small geodude, really just a stone head with muscular arms jetting out where its ears would be, flinging rocks at the larvae pokemon. As grateful as she was to be rescued, by human or pokemon it did not matter, she couldn’t help but wonder how a geodude got to be in the Viridian Forest, for they typically preferred rocky environs. She struggled to get the silky trap off her body, finally succeeding a few minutes later, as the geodude succeeded in driving away the last of the weedle.

The geodude bounced over to her and asked inquisitively, “Geodude? Geo, geo, dude?”

Delia sighed and nodded. “I’m fine, thanks. I could have taken them on, you know.”

“Is that so?” a male voice asked from behind her. Delia whipped around to see a young adult male leaning against a nearby tree, smiling smugly. “From where I stood, you were about to need a machete just to get that stuff off had my geodude and I not arrived.”

Delia brushed what silk threads were left off and grunted. “Thanks for your help, but I’m not a damsel in distress.”

The man shook his head. “No, you were a supplier in distress. My mother expects timely deliveries and yet you continue to defy common sense by entering this forest without your own pokemon. Really, I get tired sometimes of having to watch you trap yourself in foolish scenarios.”

Delia lifted up her bike and inspected her produce to see if any had been damaged. Fortunately, they were alright. She shot the man an irritated glance. “I don’t care if your mother owns the restaurant or not -- I’m not late and I don’t need rescuing. Now back off or I will be late!”

The man checked his black sports watch with red lettering, which didn’t seem to match his light yellow tank top and blue jean shorts and beige hiking boots. It only seemed to accentuate his dark brown hair, so dark it could be black, combed neatly even though most trainers who came through Viridian Forest looked like they had been in a wind tunnel. They would also bear the dusty appearance of someone who ran up against pokemon knowing sleep powder and stun spore and such, yet this trainer was immaculate. He chuckled as he checked the time. “It’s 8:55. The ‘shortcut’ you’re taking will ensnare you for a further fifteen minutes. Really, was using the trail that much more terrible?”

Delia shook her head and swore under her breath, stomping the ground with her feet in frustration. Finally, she ripped off the crate of produce from the back of her bike and thrust it into his arms. He stumbled back from sheer surprise. “Here,” she ordered. “If I deliver them to you then I’m not late because you’re the owner’s son. If you have any trouble, I’ll be back at my house, putting ointment on all these scrapes,” she said, pointing to half a dozen red lines crisscrossing her arms. There were twigs and moss hanging from every inch of her red t-shirt and black riding shorts and she could feel a few pebbles in her sneakers. Today was a rotten day and she was in no mood to bow before her family’s all-powerful boss, or her son.

The early-twenties-something man snorted his disapproval. “Don’t expect to get paid since I’m the one delivering your produce.”

Delia smiled as she got on her bike and began to pedal past him, despite her aching muscles. “Oh no, they’re your produce now -- better get a move on or Mommy’s gonna ground ya!” She laughed as she rode away, finally free of such an inconvenient chore.

Author’s Note: This is going to be a long story… Just a warning. I want to ensure that each shipping phase is well-developed, so this could conceivably go for more than 30 chapters, although I don’t know how long it’s going to be just yet. It could be shorter, but only if I can say what needs to be said. It will be the last pokemon story I do for a while, because I want to do an original fic next, so I want to put a lot of effort into this one.

Delia was busy cleaning the dishes after breakfast the next morning. There hadn’t been a lot of business at the restaurant since the Pokemon Elites was on their annual trek throughout the Kanto region, so hardly any trainers passed through Viridian around this time of the year. However, Delia cared less about the success of the restaurant and more about the damage to her bike, which had two flats from thorns she had carelessly run over. Her parents were already furious about her dumping their hard-earned paycheck in the arms of their boss’s son yesterday morning. They accused her of being selfish and arrogant -- always thinking only of herself and her deluded notions of getting picked up by a knight in shining armor.

One could hear the parents’ voices down the street. “Have you no sense of responsibility?” her father demanded. “We have the good sense to get to work on time; what’s the matter with you -- or do you still think you’re too good for a paycheck?”

Delia sulked on the couch in the living room. It wasn’t a very large house. It had five small rooms total: two bedrooms, a kitchen/living room combo, a bathroom, and a small office for crafts and the produce packaging equipment. Delia felt as though she were trapped in a poke ball sometimes, the house focusing solely on her parents and she was just the afterthought. “I don’t know why everyone’s getting so ticked off at me -- I delivered, didn’t I?”

“You dropped the produce in her son’s arms and left!” her mother retorted angrily. “Did you think they were just going to mail you the check? We get paid in cash, you know!”

Delia glared at her parents and stomped her foot on the floor. “Why does he keep following me in the forest, then?” she bellowed. “If he’s good enough to go all over the forest, then HE’S the one who should come pick up the supplies! He keeps bragging about how short a trip it is between Pallet and Viridian -- let HIM focus on something other than training that God-forsaken geodude of his!”

“It’s not our place to tell our employer how to raise her kid!” the father barked. “She’s maybe a few years older than Sam Oak, but her family is her business, not ours.”

“Well it’s not my fault the weedle sprayed my bike and crashed me,” Delia replied, grumbling. “I was making good time ‘til then.”

A knock on the door surprised her. Her parents should almost be at the farm by now, so it couldn’t be them, unless they forgot something. She grumbled to herself. Maybe they came up with a new chore for her since she didn’t have to go to Viridian that morning. As she opened the door, her parents stood facing her, as well as the boss’s son. They had apparently been yelling at each other, given their flushed faces and scratchy voices.

“This is just what we need,” the father complained bitterly yet coarsely as he entered the house. He went straight for his bedroom and slammed the door shut.

Her mother, in contrast, silently wept as she headed for the kitchen. Delia could hear her mumble something about ‘her lazy daughter’, but she couldn’t quite make it out.

Finally, the boss’s son glared at her from just outside the doorway. He was fuming, but at least his face’s redness was fading. Still, he was immaculate in his business-casual attire of black polo shirt and khakis. She looked at him, half-accusing, half-questioning. “I’ll tell you outside,” he said abruptly. Dragging her out of the house, they walked around to the back, where a small plot of bare earth was beginning to be tilled for a private garden. He pushed her against the wall and pressed his lips deeply against hers. Initially startled, Delia returned the gesture. When he finally pulled away, he sighed and looked wistfully at the bare earth. “Oak is re-purposing his land,” he told her. He glanced in the direction of the Oak family abode. “He’s turning it into a pokemon ranch for research.”

Delia gulped. “But, what about the people who work there? All the farmers? How,” she added reluctantly, “is your mom going to handle this?”

“She’s furious,” he noted with a small grin. “Nothing … legally … can be done about it, though. He has the right to do with his land what he pleases. Still, his timing is rather unfortunate and I won’t even mention the words my mother used to describe his new concept.”

“So, how’s the Café supposed to get its food, Sakaki?” Delia asked innocently. Despite her intense dislike of delivering goods all the way to Viridian, she couldn’t bear the thought her dark knight would go penniless.

He shrugged. “We may have to re-purpose too, I guess,” he said. He glanced at her as though he was a beaten growlithe puppy. “And don’t call me that, Delia. In my training I find I prefer ‘Giovanni’ -- it sounds much more romantic, don’t you agree?”

She giggled. “If you like gangster movies, sure.”

He laughed. “That does have something to do with it, after all. Novices aren’t likely to waste my time challenging me if I have the aura of an unreachable godfather.” He continued to smile. “All I need is some cheap cotton balls and jowl lines and I’ll be a Pokemon Master in no time … I’ll set a new record!”

She approached him and rubbed his chest with her hands tenderly. “I just wish we could journey together, like some pokemon trainers do -- see the world, catch rare pokemon, -- be oblivious to the cares of the rest of the world.”

He stroked her long brown hair. His voice was tender and hopeful. “I’m trying to get away from her, Delia, just like you want to leave your parents. I train my team very intensely in a small gym I built in the Café basement. I have to find some way to train them since Mother demands my constant presence at home. As soon as some of my pokemon evolve, I’ll take them and challenge the big shots around Kanto.”

Her eyes grew wide. “You built a gym! Awesome! Will you let me see?”

He chuckled. “After the mess with the delivery yesterday? Mother isn’t exactly happy with you right now.” He paused, as though deep in thought. “Sure. In fact, a … um … delivery just came in which you would definitely want to see.” He wrapped his arm around her and led her to his motorcycle standing on the front lawn. He stared off into the horizon, making sweeping gestures with his free hand. “Together, Delia, we’ll have the whole world at our fingertips. Nothing will stand in our way. We’ll rise above the commoners we suffer from and extend our reach to the heavens themselves.”

Giovanni’s motorcycle rode smoothly through the Viridian Forest. It was amazing how fast the time streamed by when going about 70. Yet, even though Giovanni took ‘shortcuts’ as well, he didn’t suffer from his decisions as much as Delia usually did. That was why Delia loved him so much -- he seemed to be untouchable. He could probably be tossed off the cliffs just south of Pallet and not get a mark. He always seemed to be in control of everything: his training, his relationships, his goals. It seemed as though he planned decades ahead of the present. And yet, he was one of the most spontaneous people she had ever met. He would just shower her in the Viridian Forest with flower petals from oddish and gloom, two plant pokemon that grew more colorful with each evolution.

When they finally entered the heavily-reinforced door to the basement, Delia’s eyes appeared ready to burst out of her head. She was breathless: a large room with a fifteen-foot-high ceiling, walls painted in earth tones, and areas devoted to training specific types of pokemon, such as a grassy plot or a water tank. There were a few training machines here and there, with more being assembled by Giovanni’s co-workers. He pointed out a small white pokemon, with a green cap on its head and a red crest of some sort on the cap. It looked like a doll. It was teleporting madly all around the gym, its arrivals timed by several onlookers. Some were cheering as the pokemon teleported faster and faster until it seemed to be everywhere at once. Finally, nearly exhausted, it landed in front of Delia and panted, although from its facial expression it was pleased with its performance.

Delia squealed with delight and tugged Giovanni’s shirt impatiently. He grinned. “It’s called a Ralts, I believe. I know you share my affinity for psychic pokemon, so when we,” he cleared his throat, “came upon this non-native species and discovered what it was, I instantly thought of you.”

She gave him a dirty look. “Are you saying I’m a tomboy or something?”

He laughed. “You know how, no matter what gender an abra you get, it always ends up with those hyper-masculine mustache whiskers?” She nodded. “Well, with this one, from what we’ve been told, it evolves into a graceful, feminine psychic dancer known to the region of Hoenn. So, I was thinking, if I’m going to be including an abra in my party, it would seem most appropriate to give you this pokemon.” The ralts looked up at Delia with big starry eyes.

Delia was overwhelmed with emotion. Here was a rare pokemon from another region, and her knight in shining armor was giving it to her! Her heart raced with excitement. She immediately embraced it, her grin threatening to rip apart her face with its size. “I can’t believe it! My own pokemon! And a psychic one, too! I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me!”

He tried to pry her arms apart. “You can show me by not killing it with your passionate embrace,” he said teasingly.

She loosened her grip and stared into Giovanni’s eyes. “You’re training an abra? Why? All they seem to do is teleport?” She paused, reflecting on her gift. “Is that all this one does, too? Are you giving me a bum gift?”

He shook his head. “It learns more than just teleport, Delia. You know that. I intend to breed these two to see how high I can get the offspring‘s stats. I prefer ground pokemon on my standard team, but I need powerful fallbacks since any grass or water pokemon trainer can devastate what I’ve got.”

Breeding? His pokemon and her pokemon? Eek, she thought, how romantic! She knew now she had made the right choice when she fell madly in love with him….

Giovanni lay back against a large beanbag on the gym floor as his girlfriend played ping-pong with her new pokemon, a ralts. He once met a gifted family in Saffron, a family devoted to the psychic arts, and he was spellbound. To be able to exercise one’s will to affect the environment directly seemed like a miracle, if he believed in such things. Having noticed that there were both human and pokemon psychics, he had decided that the best way to exercise his will was to breed or even create a powerful psychic, so that the genes involved in its nature could ultimately be bestowed upon him.

Exercising his will had become paramount to Giovanni. His mother was developing a covert underground black market and was suppressing his desire to rise through the ranks of this new organization. No matter what he wanted to do, she stood in his way like a giant Snorlax, the rotund giant of a beast best known for its unlimited appetite.

That was why he hadn’t told her yet about his new gym in the basement. If she knew, she’d try to get involved -- no, he thought angrily as he crushed a water bottle in his hand -- she’d take over the operation completely, leaving him with nothing, not even credit. Worse, she might confiscate the rare pokemon he had taken upon himself to collect.

Still, the hope of a powerful immortal existence meant nothing if his mother got involved. He also knew that immortality may not be feasible, so he decided that offspring could give him the immortality he sought. And that was why he felt attracted to Delia. Sure, she was a klutz … but she had a resolve, a strength of will, that he loved. She wasn’t afraid of him or his mother, although she had no idea what his family was up to, yet he found he couldn’t tear himself away. She was necessary -- to gain the immortality he sought. So, despite her immature whining and her klutziness and her naďve thoughtlessness, he wanted her to be his. He was willing to put aside all appearances of superiority if it meant she would be helplessly devoted to him and provide for him access to immortality.

Suddenly, everyone stood perfectly still, their mouths agape. Not a sound could be heard throughout the entire gym. All eyes seemed to be trained on the door behind Giovanni, so he turned and looked and cursed to himself.

In the doorway stood a sleek woman with long black hair, her bright red business suit standing out among all the earth tones of the room. She was furious only initially, as her dark eyes suddenly widened with the many possibilities swirling through her head. It was as Giovanni feared.

She gasped and clasped her hands together as if she were cooing over a newborn child. “I can’t believe it!” she uttered. “All this time I thought my boy was just lazy -- but I see now that he’s just shy!” She hurried to every machine throughout the room and ended up towering over the reclining son of hers. “So, you’ve been developing new training equipment, eh? This stuff could make us --”

“A-HEM!” Giovanni coughed, glancing in Delia’s direction.

Giovanni’s mother whipped around and saw the young girl, gawking at the boss’s sudden appearance, and smiled. “It could make us millions, boy. Don’t you see? People will pay big bucks for pokemon training equipment! File a few patents, slap our logos on them and rake in the big money!” She nodded toward Delia. “And I take it you’ll be handling our deliveries to pokemon keepers everywhere? It’s quite a big jump from delivering lettuce and tomatoes, don’t you agree?” She glanced back at her son. “Don’t you think she’d be of more use to us as a long-term delivery girl? She could see the world, meet new people -- why, the intrinsic rewards alone make me want to dance!”

His mother stared at him in disbelief. She frowned, then turned back to look Delia right square in the eyes. “Let me tell you a little tale of ‘partnerships’, dear,” she said bitterly:

“I was a young girl, maybe nine or ten. I was on the playground, the large sandy patch behind the old day school. We were playing baseball and I was the team captain. It was the girls against the boys. On the other team was this quiet little boy with brown hair who seemed to be thinking far away instead of right then when it was most important to his team. He had only recently been back home after getting lost while traveling. Ditsy little thing, I tell you. In any case, he was the second-baseman, as leadership was not his cup of tea. His captain had ordered him to catch the ball flying from the bat of one my players, but he just stood there like a Slowpoke, oblivious to the world. Well, we got a couple home runs out of that play and his captain was furious. He, the captain, dear, hurled the baseball at me, screaming that I had made fools of the boys. Even though I got hit in the shoulder, I confidently replied that he was correct, but we didn’t need to make fools of the boys because they were doing a great job of that themselves. However, my shoulder really started to sting, and it snapped something in that quiet little boy. He found a rock and threw it at his captain, forbidding him to hurt a girl like that again. He took over as captain, but the captain didn’t like it, so they fought. The cute little quiet boy actually won, and the captain sulked and walked off the playground. We were whipped within an inning. After the game, I walked over to the boy and slapped him, telling him I didn’t need help. He told me I was stupid, that a good leader wasn’t afraid to accept help when he or she needed it. Naturally, being around the age when young children go off on pokemon journeys, I asked him if he had any yet. He said he already raised a young charmander into a charmeleon -- you know the ones, dear, the mid-sized red-orange lizards with flames coming out their tails and a big crest coming out the back of the head. It was love, dear. To have a second-stage pokemon so early in his career -- why nothing on this earth could prepare me for his talent. I looked up to him for so many years….”

“Is there a point to this romantic nonsense?” her son wondered aloud in an irritated voice.

His mother scoffed. “Only that with time everything started to fall apart. He didn’t know how to appreciate his talents and I surely appreciated mine, so our relationship fell flat. I just wanted to warn your new help about the dangers of professional relationships.”

“Maybe you two could have been more supportive,” Delia offered in a timid voice.

Giovanni’s mother’s feathers were obviously ruffled. “I am no one’s maid, girl,” she retorted snobbishly. “Men have to clean up after themselves and support themselves. Their purpose in life is to support me and cater to my every whim!” She began to walk out the door. “Oh,” she said, not even looking back toward her son, “don’t forget -- I want specs and pricing guides for these machines on my desk by tomorrow morning.” With that, she slammed the door shut.